


The End is Where We Start From

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Light Angst, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 04:05:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12100356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: Five times Peter and Lesley talked, and one time they didn't. Future fic.





	The End is Where We Start From

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot.

“It's tantamount to a war crime, you do know that?” Lesley said to me, firing off one of her IEP's – Improvised Exploding Phones.

“They're just kids,” I shouted, over the sound of the windows in the car next to me shattering into a thousand shards. My shield held.

“I was talking about Him,” she said, in that way she always referred to Nightingale now, since the fire.

“You can't keep this up forever,” I said to her, trying to signal to Sahra and David Carey they needed to move further back. Of course they didn't.

“I'm not afraid of Him, you know,” Lesley said. And part of me wished that were true. “Running late, is he?”

“He never runs late,” I replied, though of course that wasn't the reason he wasn't here. He wasn't here because he was holed up in UCH with a chest infection that had Dr Walid more worried than I'd ever seen him. But it was reassuring to know that Lesley didn't know that.

“But he is a thief,” she said. There was a rumbling above my head and I just managed to shift out of the way as part of the Barbican's roof came crashing to the floor. Probably an improvement.

“Lesley May,” Seawoll's voice broke in, distorted slightly by the megaphone. “Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be.”

“The Black Library doesn't belong to Him,” Lesley said, ignoring Seawoll.

“It doesn't belong to you and Chorley either,” I said, taking the opportunity to move from my hiding place and move closer to where I thought Lesley was huddled.

“Watch your back,” Lesley said. Taking her literally I turned only to find myself thrown backwards from a blow to my front. It was muffled, because I'd kept my shield up and because Lesley had been pulling her punches, but it still knocked the wind out of me, and gave her plenty of time to disappear into the night.

* * * * *

Nightingale had planned his own funeral meticulously. It was dark and sombre and militaristic and Lesley seemed to be enjoying it, sat as she was at the back of the church. I could see her searching for me, expecting me to be near the front. I'd like to say she jumped when I sat down next to her, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

“Come to say goodbye?” I asked her.

“Just wanted to watch him burn,” she said.

We both looked over to where the coffin was being readied for its cremation. And then I looked down at Lesley's hands. She was wearing gloves but I knew underneath was the tell-tale damaged skin of a burn victim. It was five years since Martin Chorley set that fire, since Lesley became trapped, since Nightingale pulled her out.

She's never forgiven him for leaving her with yet more scars.

“He did it for you, not for me,” she said, following my gaze. “He didn't care if I burned.”

“Can you blame him?” I asked, instead of denying it.

We were starting to gain attention, though I wasn't sure if Lesley was aware of it yet.

“We all do what we have to,” she said.

“Yes,” Nightingale said, “I'm afraid we do.”

She did jump at that and would have released god knows how much magic at him if we – me, Nightingale and Abigail – hadn't already prepared ourselves for that eventuality. It was probably the armed police revealing themselves from their hiding places that sealed the deal though.

“You bastard,” she said, and I honestly wasn't sure whether she meant Nightingale or me.

“Yes,” Nightingale replied, without inflection. “Lesley May...”

“I'll do it,” I interrupted and Nightingale looked at me for a long moment before nodding, and letting me formally arrest her.

As she was being put inside the specially constructed van Nightingale sidled over to me.

“What did you think?” he asked, motioning back to the church.

“It didn't seem like you,” I answered honestly. I'd been surprised in fact, when he'd laid out what he'd wanted his funeral to look like, how empty it had all seemed.

He gave me one of those smiles of his I still haven't managed to categorise, even after all these years. “I just picked the opposite of everything I'd want,” he said. “Just something to bear in mind.”

Then he went off to sit in the van with Lesley, while they transported her to her new home.

* * * * * *

No one was surprised when Lesley said she'd only talk to me. Her legal standing was a bit of a grey area at the moment, though Nightingale and I had both been adamant that she be given full access to a solicitor and her family even if she had to be kept in a semi-isolated magically restrictive cell.

When I first went to see her she was standing by the window. She had a nice view of some fields and some sheep. If you liked that kind of thing.

“Has she had it yet?” she asked, without turning around.

“Has who had what?” I asked, though I knew damn well what she was talking about.

She turned around then and I was glad I'd already prepared myself to see her face; inside the cell she couldn't keep up the spell that had masked her injuries.

“There are other doctors than Dr Walid,” I said, “you don't have to turn them all away.”

Lesley just looked at me blankly and then sat down at the one desk in the room. Her bed was off to one side, curtained off to give her the impression of privacy. Nightingale and I had inspected the cell for ourselves before she'd been moved in, and tried to make it as comfortable as we could. All the little details we'd added, soft cushions and warm fleeces, pictures, books, candles – battery operated, not wax - were piled up in a corner by the door.

“Fatherhood suits you,” she said, as I sat down opposite her. “What did she spawn?”

I ignored the question and showed her some photographs. “Clare Willis, Charles Wax, Adil Clarke. Last seen with you and Martin Chorley on December 15th. Do you know where they are now?”

Lesley turned the photos over and snorted when I turned them back around. “Are you trying to prick my conscience?” she asked.

“You used to want to help people,” I said.

“You think I've stopped?” she asked, lips forming an almost smile that pulled at half-dead skin.

“It would help their families to know where they are.”

“They're not even human,” she said, pushing the photos away.

“You don't get to make that decision,” I said, more sharply than I'd intended. I'd told myself, told Nightingale, told Beverley, told Abigail, that I wouldn't let her get under my skin. But of course I couldn't help it. Beverley said it was a type of mourning, this loss I felt when I thought about Lesley even when she was sitting right in front of me. Nightingale said it was my refusal to believe anything was unfixable which made me keep coming back. As usual, I suppose, they were both right.

“Goodbye, Peter,” Lesley said, and got up and walked over to the window.

I left her to it.

* * * * *

The next time I went to see Lesley, Beverley insisted on coming with me, and on bringing our son. I was sceptical but there's nothing more protective than a new mother and when Nightingale heard what we had planned he insisted on coming along too, so there was no chance of anything happening.

Nightingale waited outside, watching on the security monitors while we went in to Lesley's cell. She didn't even look up at first, and when she did she started to reel back, but then caught herself and stood up.

“So this is it, is it?”

“His name's Joshua,” Beverley said. She cradled him close but moved his blanket so that Lesley could see his face more clearly from where she was standing, frozen to the spot.

“He looks like you,” she said to Beverley. “That must be a relief.”

Beverley ignored the jibe. “Pushing everyone away that can help you is hardly the smartest thing you've ever done.”

Lesley rolled her eyes and went to sit back down. “I did the crime, I should do the time,” she said. “Unless you think there's one law for us and one law for them.” She tilted her head and waited for Beverley to answer. Instead she looked over at me.

“We obey the same laws as everybody else,” I said, “compromise doesn't change that. Judicial discretion is built into the system for a reason.”

“Have a nice life, Peter,” Lesley said. “I never wished you any harm.”

Beverley took Joshua out of the room and left me alone with Lesley. The pile of cushions and blankets was still near the door but the books had been moved and she appeared to have been interrupted while reading one. That was something at least.

“Their parents deserve to know where their bodies are buried,” I said.

“Presuming they're dead,” Lesley countered.

Nightingale and I had given up any illusions that they weren't, but it didn't hurt to play along.

“If we could just speak to them, then, put their families minds at ease.”

“Go look after _your_ family,” she said, and turned her back on me.

I counted to one hundred but she didn't so much as twitch until I finally got up and closed the door securely behind me.

* * * * *

Nightingale had said I could wait outside if I wanted, but I didn't want to leave him alone with her, even though I knew perfectly well she couldn't do anything to him in there. He was hiding it well but taking down Martin Chorley had taken out a lot of him and he was refusing all sympathy and being his usual stubborn self about it. I, on the other hand, was sporting a broken wrist and four bruised ribs, not to mention a black eye and taking all the sympathy and drugs I could get.

“He's dead, isn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill him?”

Nightingale shifted in his seat before answering. “We did everything we could to take him in alive. It didn't prove possible.”

Lesley looked over at me and her expression, if I'd had to guess, was impressed. “So Peter did it then, and you're covering up for your little boy.”

“Peter tried to save him,” Nightingale said, adamant. “He didn't want to be saved.”

“Like I don't, you mean?” Lesley asked.

“I think you want to live very much,” Nightingale countered. “None of us would be where we are if your capacity for life wasn't as strong as it is.”

“My capacity for life?” Lesley laughed. “I did want to die once, did you know that? My face in ruins, no better than Them. And then I wanted to live. I wanted to be fixed. I wanted you to fix me.”

Nightingale flinched. “I know you don't believe me...”

“No, I don't,” she interrupted. “I think you could have, if you'd wanted. Do you know what it was like, all those doctors prodding and poking at me. All the nurses gossiping about that poor girl, lying in bandages, her face destroyed. Who's going to want to be with a girl like that? Have you any idea how humiliating it was being seen as just the woman with no face, instead of as a person?”

She got up then and pushed the table towards Nightingale who managed to just about stop it slamming it into his own rib injuries.

“Do you know how many doctors I saw? I don't. I stopped counting. All those specialists Dr Walid pushed at me. All those trips to Harley Street to see the top men in their field. Did you take any interest in what they were doing to me at all?”

“Who do you think it was that paid for them?” Nightingale asked, very softly.

Lesley froze in mid-rant and took two steps back, away from Nightingale. Her eyes were wide in almost comical surprise and then she turned to me. All I could muster was a shake of the head, I hadn't known about that either.

“I asked Abdul to make it seem as if the specialists were simply doing him a favour. I didn't want you or your family to be worrying about the cost of any treatment the NHS couldn't provide.”

“Why?” Lesley asked, the word a barely voiced whisper.

“You were injured on my watch,” Nightingale said, “because I stopped paying attention.”

“Your guilt isn't going to keep me warm at night.”

“My guilt is nobody's burden but my own,” he replied. He sighed and turned his head towards me a little. “Peter has always worried that I might kill you, that somewhere along the way I'd forget I was a policeman and go back to being a soldier. He might have been right, too, once. But he has a way of making you believe you can make a difference, to the world yes, but to yourself too. Telling us where those bodies are buried isn't just about saving those families from years of pain and uncertainty, it's to save you too.”

Lesley turned her back on us and moved over to the window. “Peter's better than the both us.”

“Where are they, Lesley?”

But Lesley refused to say another word.

* * * * *

Two months after our last visit to Lesley I brought Joshua over to the Folly for breakfast, as I did every couple of weeks. Nightingale had his hands full helping Joshua smear food all over his face and so when a letter arrived addressed to him from Lesley's prison, he motioned for me to open it.

When I did I found a single piece of paper with a map drawn on it in Lesley's unmistakable hand, with three X's drawn in red.

I looked over at Nightingale who was wiping away puréed apple from Joshua's cheeks with one of his handkerchiefs and smiling with that surprised look on his face he always wore when Joshua wriggled closer in his arms. Beverley says it because Nightingale smells like I do, but I think it's because he knows a person who'll keep him safe when he sees one.

“What is it?” Nightingale asked, apparently for the second time as he raised his eyebrows expectantly.

I showed him the map. “She finally told us the truth.”

“I see. I'll go make the necessary arrangements,” he said, and carefully handed Joshua over. He was already half way out of the room before I realised that Joshua was in need of a change.

“One of these days I'm going to show you how to change a nappy,” I called after him, but he just smiled at me and then disappeared towards the phone.

I stared down at the envelope and picked it up, hoping for some sort of clue or message that might have got stuck to the edges, but there was nothing. Still, she'd come through for us in the end, which was what mattered. It might not be a truce as such, but it was the start of a new chapter, for all of us.


End file.
